


Pfeffernüsse

by theTabularium



Category: Prototype (Video Games)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Body Horror, Depression, Other, Protective Siblings, darker than the name would have you believe, except one sibling is a literal freak of nature and not actually a sibling at all, nobody has good mental health here, shout out to the countless blackwatch goons slaughtered in the making of this fic, they're doing the best they can alright, this is in absolutely no way a sibling ship get outta here with that nonsense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-08-31
Packaged: 2019-03-29 11:38:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13926378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theTabularium/pseuds/theTabularium
Summary: Dana Mercer has a bad day get much worse and goes off the deep end. Alex remedies this with cookies, and a healthy dose of violence. Sibling bonding at it's finest.





	1. Dead Air

**Author's Note:**

> Alex and Dana really only ever had eachother. Throughout it all, despite himself and despite the world going to pieces, whatever Alex is, he cares. Dana, for her part, isn't going to loose the only semblance of family she's got left, she's every bit as stubborn as he is - or was - and not even a military occupation or apocalyptic plague can stop her.

It’s been a long few days. A few major assaults on hives around town, Blackwatch changing their patrol routes, and a new shipment of _something_ to all their bases. Dana has been working tirelessly to discover just what that shipment was – if it was a new version of BloodTox then they need to know – but there was nothing. She was going to have to take greater risks, dig deeper then she normally would. It was starting to wear her down, constantly running up against dead ends or waiting, always waiting, for data to filter and process.

The young woman sighs and puts her head in her hands, trying to fend off a headache and her worsening mood. She tries to think of anything that might spur her on – she’s already consumed her weight in coffee and chocolate is too expensive under the current state of things.

The fuzzy recollection of something  rises through the mire of her fatigue– a drink with a friend, now long since evacuated, a quiet afternoon in the rain at some hole in the wall café. Her friend taking a bag of cookies out of her backpack and offering her one like it was a secret. She’d asked her if they were doped, and her friend had erupted into such raucous laughter she’d almost sprung them – they were from home, she’d said, her mother had made them and sent them to her: small, round, covered in a sugar glaze, and heavily spiced, they were one of the nicest things she’d ever tasted. Her friend had called them something she couldn’t hope to pronounce and couldn’t now bring to mind.

God, what she wouldn’t give for a hint of that normalcy now, to be able to go out and meet a friend for a casual chat, not having to worry about who saw her where, or how close she got to exclusion zones, or how long she’d be away from her endless research.

A plan forms in her mind. It’s going to be an hour at least until this next dataset compiles, decrypts, and gives her anything workable.  The world has gone to shit and she’s going to get her god damned cookies - and she can only think of one place to get them.

Dana stands, grabs a jacket and a beanie for good measure, tucking her hair up into the hat, thankful it’s cold enough outside she can incorporate it into her disguise. She retrieves a battered wallet from under a pile of printed radio transcripts and tries not to think of the stolen cards within. Alex had given her a credit card to use, to keep her purchases hidden. He’d just left it one day, with a post-it note with the pin number scrawled on it in his horrendous handwriting – doctor’s handwriting, she’d always joked; only one worse is a journalist’s, he’d always reply – and she didn’t ask who Sandra Dean was. There are things they just know to avoid talking to eachother about. It’s unsettling but she still has to eat and can't rely on Alex for deliveries.

\----

She's almost there, literally just up the street. It’s been a hard trip in more ways then one, and now it’s getting worse. There's Blackwatch patrols _everywhere_ , making Dana so nervous she’s sure she’d stutter if she spoke. She’s not the only one – everyone gives the soldiers a wide berth, hurries away from them on whatever business it is they have, because they all know the closer to the infection zones they get, the more ruthless Blackwatch become; itchy trigger fingers and all that.  

A foot patrol down and across the street sees a woman who obviously is sick with something - flushed in the face, snuffling, sneezing. They pull her into a side street so fast she screams in alarm, turning Dana’s head from where she’s been concentrating on the path ahead. She can see the soldiers in a line across the alley mouth, can hear the growled voice of the patrol leader start grilling her, can hear the woman’s increasing desperate responses - she swears it's only hayfever, she's got the prescriptions to prove it, but her license puts her home address right on the edge of the nearest evacuated Hive zone, they're not believing her - their patrol leader steps away to make a call on his radio and then turns back.

A single gunshot cracks out.

The street empties. Dana just turns and leaves. She just goes right back home with all thoughts of the cookies banished from her mind.

\----

The apartment is cluttered with familiar mess, little bits and pieces of information her mind constantly mulls on and tries to draw coherently together. Hacking gives her that constant last step of safety, that last barrier between herself and her enemy, and she can always pull the plug. She tries to work through the murder, to bury herself in her ceaseless, dogged task of drawing whatever information she can out of the humming digital hive that is Gentek-Blackwatch’s integrated network, but with the worst possible timing, the field report from that patrol flashes to the top of one of her screens. It has been flagged by one of her filters but Dana is so shocked she doesn’t process why, just opens in. The woman’s death is nothing but a footnote:

_ONE (1) INFECTED REMOVED FROM YELLOW ZONE._

_BODY SENT FOR POSTMORTEM AND DISPOSAL._

She closes the report file. She saves her notes. She leaves her searches filtering the endless streams of data she’s sapped from the systems through a million tiny holes. Pausing briefly, she checks the hodge-podge radar she’d constructed, tracking signals from the radios of Blackwatch personnel, but there was nothing close enough she needed to worry about. She’d had enough.

\----

Alex comes looking when there's been almost three days of radio silence.

One day isn't unusual, two without so much as a peep to touch base, and he's concerned. Worried, even. He rings the buzzer in the foyer but nobody answers. He goes up anyway, comes in the fire escape stairs. They're never locked.

He knocks - he's finally learned, though sometimes he doesn't because the reactionary tiff afterwards is comforting and familiar, even if he's only going through the motions of someone else's life, they both don't mind - but no reply. There's a moment where he's really worried, not quite scared but the dull buzz of alarm is starting to build as he steps into the quiet, darkened apartment. The curtains are drawn, the only light is from the computers – screensavers on, untouched from how she left them days ago.

"Dana?" He calls softly, voice at odds with the predatory scan of the room, searching for anything out of order, any sign of disturbance, any scent of diesel exhaust, blood, faint body odor mixed with the sharp kick of medical bleach- the give-aways of Blackwatch grunts.

For a moment, there's nothing. Then - a quiet snuffle from the bedroom. He's across the apartment in a heartbeat, stepping into the tiny room - barely big enough for the bed and a set of drawers - ready for anything except what he finds: Dana, curled into a tight ball under a tangle of covers.

"Dana?"

"... Hey." The young woman replies, voice raw.

"What's wrong? Are you hurt?" Alex can't see or smell any hint of injury, somewhere in the mess of his mind a part of him is starting to scream in terror that she's finally been infected, but he ignores it like he ignores so much of the noise in his head.

"No, no, I'm … fine... Well... _Not really!_ " Dana gives a harsh laugh, voice quivering.

Alex takes a seat on the edge of the bed. Dana shifts away from him, almost a flinch, which hurts, coming from her. "What happened?"

"Nothing, don't worry," She grumbles, "It's stupid."

"I haven't heard from you in three days, so it's definitely something," He says firmly.

Tense silence reigns, each of them as stubborn as the other. Dana can feel Alex's gaze even turned away as she is, the cold pressure bordering unsettling, her body picking up on what her brain knew but put aside; alone in a dark room with something puppetting the figure of her brother _too well_ but not well enough to hide the unsettling edge to its movements, like how _goddamned quiet_ it was while it sat there, waiting for her to reveal her weaknesses.

"Alright," She says at length, letting out a huge sigh and rolling over. She casts a sidelong glance at Alex, sees his head cocked to one side so she can see a single pale grey eye watching her, still waiting.

"I went shopping," She starts, stopping almost immediately when she sees Alex go to say something, cutting him off with a growled "Save it! I just really needed to stretch my legs, I'd had a shit few days getting nowhere with this particular trawl, and I just... Really fucking wanted some of those spiced cookies, you know, the little round ones with the sugar coating - I think they're German? I don't know..."

"Pfeffernüsse."Alex says without missing a beat - he does know, parts of him anyway.

Dana shoots him another look but continues, “Well I could only think of one place close enough to get it, this tiny little shop up towards Harlem.”

“You went to _Harlem?_ ” Alex exclaims with the faintest growled reprimand. The whole area had been lost to a massive hive, despite the close proximity to a Blackwatch base on the North-West of Central Park.

“No, you idiot, I’m not that fucking stupid!” Familiar vitriol lends strength to Dana’s voice, “I said _towards_ Harlem, use your fucking ears!”

“Okay, okay!” The routine of a sibling spat – age old, blows traded more for the sake of it then to actually hurt – seems to relax them both.

“I was just down the street and there were Blackwatch patrols everywhere,” Dana turns slightly more towards him, lets him lean back closer, “There was this woman- Christ, she can’t have been much older then me – and she had hayfever or something, right? Or the fucking flu, I don’t know - some Blackwatch thugs just – just… God!”

She can’t finish her sentence, her voice cracks and she bites her lip to hold back a sob. Alex, for once, holds back the myriad of quips that spring readily to mind. He can feel Dana tremoring, panicked shudders, can hear the hiss of her breath as she tries not to break down. More than one part of him wants to reach out, draw her close, hold her and let her cry until she has nothing left – but he doesn’t move, just sits, stone still, on the end of the bed, unsure and unwilling to move in case it panics her more.

“I'm not naive!" Dana spits suddenly, eyes welling with hot, angry tears. "It just... God, it really got to me.”

“What did they do?” Alex asks softly, almost dangerously quiet.

Dana rubs a hand over her face, curls tighter again. When she replies, it’s soft enough that Alex alone would be the only one to hear it, “They shot her. They _killed_ her, right there. In the alley like some _thug_. For _sneezing!_ Those bastards!”

Alex’s face distorts with disgust – for all his personal monstrosity, Blackwatch were unmatched for their brutality.  Dana goes quiet again, withdrawing back into the memory of the event.

Alex stands, shocking her. He disappears out the door before she can ask what he’s doing, and for a moment she thinks he’s left, feels a bitter anger well – _abandoned again,_ _how dare you, chickenshit –_ but hears him in the kitchenette, then the clunk of plumbing. He comes back, glass of water offered in silent appeasement.

Her anger deflates instantly to tired shock, and she accepts it wordlessly, sitting up.

“When is the last time you ate anything?” He asks, arms folded, appraising her like so many times before. He’d always looked out for her – but this isn’t her brother, the ruse is too seamless, too well practiced, too _easy_ , but she forces herself to ignore it, to play into the attempt.

“I don’t know – yesterday, I think? What time is it?” Her phone is dead, stuffed inside her pillow.

“Nearly eight in the evening.” Alex states with a hint of derision, turning on his heel again. He’s gone for a few minutes but Dana doesn’t really keep track of it. When he returns he’s carrying a plate of buttered toast and it’s the best thing she’s smelled in days.

“Eat.” He instructs as only a sibling – or someone with the life experience of one – can.

Dana’s too tired to offer any resistance, trades the empty glass for the plate. Alex retreats to the kitchen – he watches her too keenly when she eats, like the spectacle is entirely novel, and too often both their thoughts stray towards his more unconventional dietary habits, something Dana has established as a taboo.

Instead, he rifles about the mess of her desk until he finds the battered wallet, stuffed with different cards, all with different names, each a different murmur in his mind. He takes whichever his fingers touch first and pockets it, before going back to make sure Dana has eaten.

The plate is empty, on the end of the bed, and Dana is laying on her back with an arm draped over her face – but Alex can tell, just by her breathing, she’s still awake.

He picks up a discarded cushion and tosses it – very gently – at her head.

“Hey!” She says, peering at him from under her spiky fringe, and her stomach twists seeing him flash a lopsided grin – all at once so reassuringly familiar and terrifyingly alien.

“Try and get some sleep. Some _proper_ sleep.” He says.

“Fine.” She grumbles, but her exhaustion is dragging her back towards slumber anyway.

“Good. I’ll be back.” Then he does leave. Dana doesn’t hear exactly how, but she knows the feeling of the empty apartment all too well.

She tries to put the warring reactions inside her aside and sleep. One part of her misses him keenly already, as it did every time he left, another is relieved that creeping feeling of unease has abated. It’s not as bad as it used to be – she used to break out in a cold sweat when he’d lean over her shoulder to point something on a screen out, her chest would tighten as he stood behind her, too close and too quiet, not speaking, not even breathing, just listening, watching, waiting – but its still noticeable. She tells herself she can trust him, that she has to trust him, tries to convince herself that he would _never_ do _anything_ , but she doesn’t do a great job.

Still, slowly, Alex’s odd presence was becoming less unsettling, and almost reassuring. If he was there, she told herself again and again, then there was nothing else to be afraid of.  Not of losing the only family she had left, in whatever for that might be, not of being stuck in a warzone without a hope, not of not knowing where her enemies were. After all, he was the most dangerous thing – according to Blackwatch, according to the news, according to hushed conversations in the streets – on the whole damn island. And if the biggest threat to her was right where she could see it, what else need she be afraid of?

Another less pained sigh escapes her, followed shortly, at last, by sleep.

\----

Alex travels disguised, acting as innocuous as possible, coursing a winding trail through the city he knows is clear of patrols and check stations with detectors.

He finds the shop – passes the alleyway that stinks of medical disinfectant now the Blackwatch clean-up crews have finished with it – and once he finds the cookies, he clears the shelf of every packet of it holds. He pays in full on the card, punching in the purchase sequence someone else had committed to muscle memory without so much as pausing to think about it. The store owner doesn’t bat an eyelid – after all that’s going on, someone with a serious craving for pfeffernüsse is nothing she cares to be bothered about.

Two plastic bags filled with cookies in hand, Alex heads back to the apartment.

\----

Alex knocks again, and again, there’s no reply, but this time he’s not worried. Hopefully that means that Dana was finally asleep.

He brushes the mouse of the computer as he swoops by, waking the screen. He deposits the bags on what uncluttered space he can find on the kitchen counter, then goes back to the desks to read. He doesn’t touch anything, doesn’t move anything from how she’s left it, just scans the notes. Her last entry is a short report of any search findings, and then a hasty note about a certain Sergeant Nielson and a patrol number. His mind is instantly alight with information – but he’ll deal with that later.

For the moment, there’s nowhere else he needs to be, no monsters of either kind he needs to be hunting; he always makes sure he’s sated before he sees Dana, some part of him fearful that she could always tell, as if his ruse of humanity weakens and lets show more of the creature underneath.

Thusly, he turns his attention to the kitchenette – it’s a mess, not unusual, but it will give him something to do.

He pulls the door to the bedroom almost shut, leaving it open a sliver more for Dana then for himself. He can hear someone hacking their lungs up three floors down – guttural, choking, but not infected, he knows pulmonary emphysema when he hears it - so he has no problem keeping an ear on her with two sheets of plywood between them.

The task is done all too soon, dishes washed and dried, stowed where they belong, benches wiped. He unpacks the pfeffernüsse and leaves them stacked in one corner of the bench where they won’t be missed.

Alex saunters back over to the desks to check the radar – still quiet, patrols moving in their neat little circuits. There’s not even a foray into a hive.

He briefly considers leaving, going to find some trouble to stir up, but he wants – he _needs_ – to stay. Whatever Dana is to him, she matters – Dana, who hadn’t turned on him even when he discovered he was but a sick parody of her brother, who still hits him on the arm when he says something stupid even if she’s just read the damage report from his latest tiff with Blackwatch and knows full well he’s killed someone for less. She knows, and she still leaves the bathroom window unlocked for him, still steers him out of countless Blackwatch traps when she could easily lead him to slaughter.  Whatever he’s done to earn this, Alex thinks, he’s not going to waste it.

The clock on the wall tells him Dana has only been asleep for three hours – she’s going to need more then that. So, Alex stands by the door to her room, leaning back against the wall, arms folded across his chest, and fixes his gaze arbitrarily somewhere on the ground a few feet in front of him. He tries to force the rushing in his mind to quiet, to be still. He never rests – he knows he doesn’t need to, just as much as he knows he couldn’t even if he did – but he’s trying to learn how to at least pause.

He takes a few deep, measured breaths – not that he needs _that_ either – tries to ignore the incessant roaring of everything in his mind until it becomes white noise.

It works, for a few blissful moments, but the tide turns and the murmur warps into screaming feedback of _too much, too loud, Jesus Christ, no, no, NO!_

Alex flinches, arms rippling and flashing into claws, figure bristling with reactionary tendrils.

A low growl rumbles from him as he shakes like a dog just out of water, and he resumes a more normal façade. That was enough of that.

He glances at the clock again- now was as good a time as any.

He steps into the kitchen, taking one of the packets of cookies off the bench and heading into the room. He pauses at the door.

For a moment, Dana seems untroubled, almost normal. Not for the first time, he thinks on how much easier she might have it if he had never remembered – but remembered isn’t the right word, he’d imprinted – but moves swiftly past it.  He can’t undo that. 

Dana feels someone put a hand on her arm and flinches violently, panicking until she processes the familiar, gruff “Hey.”

Alex sees her jolt and immediately regrets touching her – he’d messed up, God, he thought of all the people he would know how to approach, but it wasn’t ever that easy, they could all tell, one way or another – and he rocks back on his heels, puts a bit more distance between them.

Dana blinks owlishly at him. “Alex? What?” She mutters blearily.

A soft smile, almost mischievous, twists his mouth, and he holds up the opened bag so she can see it, shaking it appetizingly. The strong scent of cloves and cinnamon wake her fully.

“Pfeffernüsse.” He says, and tilts the packet in offering.

Dana’s face breaks into a shocked smile that warms him right to whatever heart he has, and she sits up to take the cookies with an air of disbelieving joy. She holds the bag to her chest, taking a huge breath, savoring the spices and the rare luxury of the treats.

Alex settles back, watching, then freezes as she looks up at him. Even in the murk of the room he can see she’s crying again. What warmth had kindled in him stutters. Suddenly, she’s grabbed his arm, and he goes as limp as a rag-doll, too worried of lashing out, too wary of reacting at all, and lets himself be pulled forwards – and Dana is hugging him fiercely, like she hasn’t in as long as he can remember, like she hasn’t since they both discovered he wasn’t who or what either of them thought he was - and Alex feels… _loved._

Not the memory of it, not the loaned sensation from some fragment in his mind, but whatever part of him that crawled out of Penn Station all those long weeks ago is feeling something entirely its own, something it dares to think that it might just have _earned._

“Thank you,” Dana says, voice muffled, her head buried into his jacket, uncaring of the unnatural softness, of the faint scent of blood, and of something else that she didn’t want to give a name. She just holds him, and after a moment, she feels the tension in him give way. Alex puts an arm around her – she ignores the feeling of muscles like steel cables moving too fluidly around her, ignores the details of thousands of reports of people who got this close to this _creature_ and how that went for them – and hugs her back with a tenderness he didn’t think himself capable of.

For once, the strength in him doesn’t feel so threatening, Dana thinks, for once, there’s a comfort in having the most dangerous thing she’s ever seen hold her so close, for once, she feels like she can trust Alex – whoever, _whatever_ he is - entirely.

For that brief moment, they are alright.

The moment passes, Dana drops her arm and Alex stands to leave.

“Wait,” She snags the sleeve of his jacket with a hand, freezing him mid-step, “Don’t… Can you stay? Please?”

Alex is taken back – he tries to keep his visits short, both to decrease the likelihood of someone finding the safehouse, and because he knows she’s unsettled by him, the constant reminder of the ruse neither of them are quite ready to give up. To complicate things, he’s been off the streets for almost a full twenty-four hours. Blackwatch could be having a party out there and he wouldn’t know.

“I…” He starts, uncertain.

Dana’s hand drops from his sleeve. “No, you’re right, it’s stupid.” She mutters.

Bitter anger twists in him, directed internally. _You heartless bastard._

“Give me two hours, then I’ll be back.” He says.

Dana looks up. “What, really?”

“Two hours,” Alex swears, “I promise.”

He means it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I re-played Prototype for the first time in years and I still have some feelings, so you all get this four part trainwreck of dysfunctional sibling bonding. 
> 
> On another note entirely, I'm Australian so if I've missed swapping a 'biscuits' for 'cookies' somewhere, please let me know!


	2. Bird Dog

The harsh buzzer of the foyer intercom draws Dana out from her work. She makes no move to answer – there’s only one person who’d be buzzing to get in, and he doesn’t need her to get the door. Less then a minute later, Alex’s familiar hooded form slips soundlessly into the apartment.

“Hey,” He grins, seeing Dana perched on her chair at the desk, shrouded in a blanket. There’s a half-empty packet of pfeffernüsse and a mug of coffee within arms reach in front of her.

“The pef - poof - hell, the cookies - they worked,” she says brightly despite stumbling on the word.

“Pfeffernüsse.” He corrects with a faintly taunting grin, standing beside her and peering at the screens.

“Yeah, those, they worked - I finally managed to fish up something decent: that new delivery.” Dana pulls up a few windows; the delivery report and the coded contents, and then a scansheet of a user manual to something titled _‘AL-S MRD’_.

“Drones?” Alex comments, scan-reading the manual as Dana scrolls lazily through a few pages.

“Not like the detector units, these are reconnaissance. Blackwatch has imported them in from some lab in Canada,” Dana continues, “Looks like each base has two, for now, to accompany the more important patrols.”

“Great. More eyes in the sky.” Alex huffs, but part of him is thrilled by the challenge.

“I’d love to get a look at one, find a way to track them – they’ve got their own unique encryptions so I can’t ping them like I do the standard digital radios.” Dana says.

“Well done, though.” Alex says earnestly, glad to see her in a better mood.

The compliment makes her smile. “Thanks for helping.”

“I was just an errand boy,” He straightens with a shrug – then spies another document peeking out from behind the front ones, a personnel file of one ‘NIELSON, J’. Recognition flickers in the fragments of his mind, but not strong enough to draw together coherently.

“Who’s that?” He points to the document.

Dana looks guilty, caught out, but brings the window to the front. “That’s…. the patrol leader from Harlem.” She says softly.

As soon as Alex sees the man’s face – narrow jawed but not weak, high hairline buzzed to a number one, eyes cold even in a photograph – his mind hums with information. Loud mouthed, cocksure - all typical for Blackwatch – and disliked, even amongst his own, which is a feat in and of itself.

Dana watches his face twist, recognizes his attention turning inwards. “Do you know him?”

“By reputation only.” Alex replies darkly, not entirely untruthful.

“Oh,” Dana says, at a loss.

Alex looks sideways at her, “What are you bothering yourself with _him_ for?”

The young woman reaches for a cookie, but doesn’t eat it, just holds it close and tries to focus on the scent of spices not the bitterness of the memory, “I wanted to know… what kind of _monster_ he is…”

“And do what?”

“I don’t know!” Dana says, taking an angry bite of pfeffernüsse.

“Don’t dwell on it.” He says.

“You’re telling me not to dwell on it?” She says through a mouthful of cookie.

Alex pauses. “Yeah, fair point.” He remarks dryly.

“I just… yeah, I don’t know, I don’t even know what I’d say to him if I found him,” She mutters. Alex shifts slightly, leaning closer but not touching her, and waits.

She takes a moment, but regains a more familiar spark, closing the Sergeant’s file and bringing up another document – one he recognizes instantly as a mission briefing, complete with map. “The drones aren’t all I found, looks like they’ve found a kind of… off shoot of the Harlem hive? They want to go take it out. They’ll _probably_ road test those new drones there.”

Alex doesn’t need any more than the suggestion in her voice. “Sounds like my kind of party.”

\----

Alex drops off the roof of one building to another with the inhuman ease, uncaring of being spotted by any residents – there were none left, none that would object anyway, they have far more pressing concerns like the throngs of rabid walkers and Blackwatch. The whole area stinks of decay and garbage, city council having long since abandoned any runs in hive exclusion zones.

A burst of gunfire ahead brings his attention back to the task at hand.

“Speaking of trouble…” He mutters to himself, surging forward and up onto the next roof to regain sight of the patrol he’s tailing. From his vantage point a street over and over ten floors up, he can see three troop carriers flanked by at least a dozen marines moving slowly into the zone. Two Abrams tanks rumble along with them, one on point and one on the tail. For the time being, they’re not encountering much resistance, but that will change.

Alex follows, flanking them from a few buildings out, ever mindful of the scornful caws of crows from overhead or the thundering scream of a Hunter.

\----

Dana watches her jury-rigged radar nervously, waiting, tracking Alex by proxy. The pings she can see making a brave dive into the Harlem hive exclusion zone are slow, orderly. She waits.

The dots scatter suddenly, fanning wide and racing towards something else. The patrol disperses, running like crazed ants. Some of the pings go silent and still. Good, she thinks. The world was better off less every single one of those Blackwatch bastards.

Part of her hopes that it’s not Alex they’re swarming - every time he leaves, she fears he’s gone for good – but she puts that out of her mind.

\----

Alex is _furious_.

He thought he’d been far enough back – but then the turret of the rearmost tank had swiveled to lock onto him like some great, unblinking eye and he’d had a millisecond to process that before the building he’d been perched on exploded. Aged brickwork was no match for a 120mm explosive shell.

He hangs for a second at the apex of his jump, watching the soldiers flood towards his position, wondering how he got spotted. Then he hears a faint whir, pivoting midair to spot a tiny drone hovering almost soundlessly behind him.

 _Fucking great._ He lands and instantly rebounds back towards the drone with vicious intent – but it snaps left, dodging his attack, then zips away towards the patrol.

The tank fires off another round, the soldiers are close enough now to open fire. Things are getting very messy, very fast.

Alex comes down amongst the soldiers like a cat amongst pigeons: violently. He can see the drone hovering within the relative safety of the main patrol, guarded by the machine guns of the tanks currently spewing bullets like hellfire. They won’t fire their heavier guns, not while he’s going blow for blow with their men.

He crushes something in one fist – infected or a soldier he doesn’t care to check – and his other arm becomes a snaking whip he flicks towards the darting aircraft. It misses by yards and he’s punished for his distraction. Three soldiers catch him in crossfire and he drops to one knee, staggering.

Soldiers scramble back as his figure erupts in writhing, visceral tendrils, jagged and sharp, loosing composure and retaining only the suggestion of a human form. The creature slams _through_ a car – not over it – and a man is sucked in and reduced to nothing. Alex’s form settles slightly, enough to show huge claws as he vaults for the next nearest infantryman.

The pavement around them explodes as the heavy armor unleashes again. It’s a vain attempt, the soldier was in pieces before the shell hit.

He has to get the drone before things get any worse.

Alex throws himself towards the convoy in a mad sprint, eyes locked on the darting craft. The turret of the rearmost Abrams swivels to get him in its sight – at the last second Alex _leaps_ , so close he can feel the shot go by below him.

The drone swoops away again, just as he predicted. His jump overshoots and Alex twists and dashes midair with a surge of inhuman strength, snatching the drone out of the air in a net of ropey biomass.

Success.

Alex lands half-way up a building, impact sending a window-shattering shockwave across the face of the apartments, and then takes off in a vertical jump. Soldiers scramble after him,  chasing his path with white-hot tracers, someone trying to line up air-support, but he’s lost in the mess of buildings before they can finish the call.

\----

Dana’s eyes haven’t left the mute radar display. She watches on as the blips draw away from the convey, stretched out as if pulled by a giant magnet. The chase persists for a minute or so before the marker still, regroup into the familiar groups of a squad, and head back to their convoy. The young woman lets loose a relieved breath, and skulls the rest of her cold coffee.

 _Chalk one more up to us._ She thinks, adding a strike to her mental tally.

Taking another pfeffernüsse from the packet, she turns back to her work. She’s no technician, but a journalist always has sources, and she can think of a few deepweb gearheads who would _love_ to help her crack into the military’s newest toy.

\----

Alex doesn’t show with his prize until after dark.

He’s taken care to make sure Blackwatch wasn’t tracking it, and by proxy, him. He’d spent a long three hours perched on the cell tower on top of a building he knew wasn’t in a patrol route, waiting for the thud of helicopter rotors or the growl of their cannons. Satisfied when the only attention he’d received was from curious pigeons, he’d headed straight to the safehouse.

Dana is still at her desk working when he arrives. She’s so engrossed she doesn’t even move when he knocks on the window, and he makes a point to slam it shut.

“Alright, alright, I heard you the first time!” She says without looking away from her screens.

He sees she’s amassed three more empty mugs since he’s been away, and completely finished one pack of the cookies. “Have you eaten _anything_ but pfeffernüsse all day?” He asks as he pads up beside her.

“Beans.” She replies with a grin.

“Coffee doesn’t count and you know it.” He rebuts.

Dana doesn’t rise to the jibe, engrossed in her work.

Alex is quiet, surprised. “What, nothing? Not a bite? Not interested at all in what I got you?”

“Hmm?” She says, before sitting straight with a start, “Oh! Wait, you got one?”

 _That’s more like it,_ Alex thinks, “You’ll have to come and see. The internet can wait a few minutes.”

Dana stands and stretches stiffly, rolling her shoulders, then follows Alex up onto the roof. They wait a second at the door, Alex going still and listening like only he can, before stepping out. It’s a tired, familiar routine; Dana wishes she could just once leave her apartment without feeling like a doe in deer season walking into a meadow.

The city evening is muggy and still, full of the noise of typical bustle and reassuringly empty of sirens or screams. Alex leads her to the bank of air conditioning units, and pulls the cover off one, taking something out from within and setting it on top of another duct with a flourish.

“Tada! I got you a present,” He says, motioning to what looks like a tangled nest of charred, blackened cables until Dana spies the edge of a metal rotor sticking from it.

“You couldn’t bring me one _intact_ ,” She says, grimacing at the inert biomass, “How am I supposed to get anything when it’s covered in all… _that.”_

Alex cocks a brow, reaching out and placing a hand on the mess. There’s a second then the bulk of the coils crumble into dust, leaving only the rotors and the camera blister on the underside encased.

Dana glances at him, somewhere in between impressed and alarmed, as she leans closer to inspect the body to find some way to open the casing. “Neat trick.”

“Apoptosis,” He states with a smirk, “Controlled cell death.”

“Nerd.” The woman jibes, grinning.

The brief exchange of wit feels wonderfully normal and Alex catches his own smile growing wider, finds himself giving a hoarse chuckle.

Dana lifts the drone and turns it over, finding the panel she was looking for, and grins deviously. “Oh, this is going to be _fun._ ” She says. “Come on, let’s crack this thing open.”

With that, she trots back inside. Alex waits a moment, scanning the skies, ever wary, and then follows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AL-S MRD = Aeyron Labs – SCOUT Miniature Reconnaisance Drone.


	3. Red Line

The thud of the bathroom window closing wakes Dana with a start where she’s fallen asleep on the couch.

It’s been two days since Alex snagged the drone, and she’d been working tirelessly at turning it against its former masters. He’d stayed for a few hours before leaving – he had other things to do, she was poor company when she hyperfocused. She was waiting to hear back from someone about jail-breaking the drone’s control system so she could pilot it remotely from her desktop, and had seized the opportunity afforded by differences in time-zones to sleep.

The bathroom door opens suddenly, and Alex stalks into the murk of the living area.

“Jesus!” Dana jumps at the suddenness of his entrance.

Alex doesn’t react, he just starts pacing the length of the lounge like he’s on autopilot.

“Alex?” She asks, but he doesn’t even seem to hear her. She turns on the lamp by the couch and floods the room with a weak yellow light, the incandescent bulb taking its sweet time to heat up.

Alex flinches at the sudden light, eyes snapping to her with a flash of animalistic eye-shine. He stops, just for a second, long enough for Dana to get a look at him. What she sees chills her.

He’s _shaking_. Wide-eyed, cyanotic lips curled back from long teeth in displeasure at the sudden light, his whole figure twitching even as he stands still. It looks like he’s barely maintaining his shape.

Then he’s off again just as suddenly as he stopped, pacing like a caged tiger, hands ceaselessly clenching and unclenching, working over something.

Dana is frozen in place – Alex gets away from himself every now and then, gets lost. Seeing him like this scares her more than his anger, makes him simultaneously more human and yet more undeniably alien.  It takes her a moment to realize he's rambling about something, voice nothing more than a rushed whisper, ragged like he’s screamed it hoarse. She can’t understand a word of it, he might not even be speaking English, she can’t tell.

Neither, truth be told, can Alex. He's utterly _wild_ , frenzied, he can't make sense of what's in his head and it’s showing, wild thoughts pouring straight out his mouth with no conscious control.  There are times like this when he's drowning in the flood of voices, of memories -  so he comes here, to Dana, someone who can piece it all together – Dana can help, Dana will always help. They’d always had eachother, it had been that way as long as he could remember. Somehow, they could work it out.

Usually, he’d be right. Tonight, though, he's a mess.

“Alex, slow down, I can’t understand you,” Dana says, trying to start a conversation, trying to give him something to root himself with instead of fighting the tangle of his mind.

He looks at her like he's not really seeing her, like he doesn't really know her, bloodshot eyes wide and... _Scared_.

“Hey,” She goes to take his hand as he paces by her but he jerks away - in his current state he's only sure of one thing, that he's dangerous, that he shouldn't be touched - so she thinks laterally and offers him a cookie.

"Hey!” Dana says with more force. “Stop, sit your ass down and have a damn pepper-poof- _whatever_!" She orders, waving the packet.

"Pfeffernüsse." He corrects automatically, voice a hoarse whisper, turning away to start another leg of pacing - but pauses.

Dana can see she's knocked him enough out of his train of thought that she might be able to bring him back.

"Sit down." She says again, softly but no less firmly, and points to the couch beside her. Alex obeys, still unfocused, sits heavily next to her and takes a cookie. "Don't just look at it, eat it, you idiot."

He does, and despite himself, he enjoys it. The taste draws calmer tones from the maelstrom in his mind, gives it something other than the taste of blood and bile to focus on.

Dana watches as the shudders subside, as the clarity returns to his gaze – focused, present, but no less pained. "There. You back with me now?"

"Yeah… I think so."  He says at length. It scares him to loose himself - what little concept of self he had - to the screaming conglomerate he'd amassed.

“What’s going on?” She asks.

“I.. I think I ate someone.” He stumbles around the sentence, flexing his hands like he’s trying to work feeling back into them.

Dana blanches at the subject, but she can’t just leave him like this. “Alright… On accident?” She knows it’s a futile hope, but she still asks.

Alex falls quiet again. He won’t answer that one. “It wasn’t supposed – they aren’t supposed to think – not like that,” He stammers.

She’s not sure she wants to know the answer, but she asks anyway, “Not supposed to think what?”

The thing on the couch beside her finally meets her gaze. “They’re not supposed to remember.”

That’s more than what Dana can handle. The shock must show on her face, Alex looks back to his hands with a muttered “Sorry.”

“No, it’s… it doesn’t matter.” Dana says. Despite the tension, she’s struggling to stay awake. She watches Alex kneading his hands – spotless, free from any hint of violence – and shoves the pfeffernüsse into them.

“Here. Have those.” She curls herself into her end of the lounge and pulls the blanket back up. “Wake me up when the computer dings.”

Alex nods wordlessly. Hold the cookies, wake Dana when the computer makes a noise. He can do that. The tasks give him something to focus on other than inwards. The apartment falls into silence. Dana is asleep in seconds, snoring quietly, but Alex isn’t paying too much attention, he’s trying to piece together his breakdown.

He remembers brawling with a hunter. The fight had come down to the wire, the beast had waited until he’d started a firefight with a patrol to ambush him. Between the soldiers and trying not to be pounded into the concrete by the hunter’s hammer-like fists, he’d run himself right to the red line, almost empty. The airstrike had been a mercy. The street went from battlefield to a blizzard of debris and smoke, just enough for him to flee into the chaos of the nearest infected zone.

It had happened there.

Half mad with adrenaline and exhaustion, he’d consumed the first walker to stumble within his reach- but for the first time, that walker was still self aware.

His name had been Aaron. Aaron Hollis. He’d been repeating that name to himself like a mantra because Aaron _remembered_ who he had been. Aaron had watched his friends and family turn to the will of the virus or die. Aaron was stuck in the shambling, maddened form of a walker, unable to control it, just watching as it did what the Hive commanded.

He had welcomed consumption. He had been relieved to be unmade. He had _thanked_ Alex as he’d died.  

The realization - that there was every chance he might suddenly become a mindless drone, losing control and losing everything he'd desperately pulled together, losing Dana – sent Alex to pieces. He is barely in control as it is, unable to tell to who’s tune he’s dancing. 

Alex draws a long, shaky breath. He sucks in a lungful of spices, cloves, and the faint scent of sugar. It drives away some of the fog of fear, enough that he can lean back against the couch.

He finally spares a glance to Dana – she’s still sound asleep. That in itself heartens him. Either he’s not as far gone as he feared, or she doesn’t care. Either way,  it calms him to just sit, listening to the occasional snore, ignoring the cacophony of his mind until it dies down to the usual dull roar.

There’s a sardonic chirp from the desk, one of the monitors turns on.

Alex starts – he’d better wake Dana.

\----

“Yes!” Dana crows, followed immediately by “Fuck!”

The drone screams to a halt barely an inch short of the wall, then zips backwards over Alex’s crouched figure.

“I thought you said you could fly that thing?” He stands slowly, glowering at the quadcopter.

“Hey, it didn’t crash, that counts.” Dana says. She watches as the little drone lands unaided on the floor beside her desk. _Thank god for a homing function,_ She thinks.

“So, what sort of range are we looking at?” Alex leans against the desk on the other side of her, still giving the drone a cold look. The incident the night before hasn’t left him entirely unruffled, as much as he puts up a front, he’s feeling taut as a wound spring.

Dana either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care to notice. “About a mile and a half, but RayMaxx says the buildings will fuck that up.”

“Right,” Alex tries not to roll his eyes at the hacker’s handle, “So you’d have to be close to pilot it.”

“Unfortunately, yeah.” Dana busies herself flicking through a few open documents. “I don’t want to risk pulling a live feed from the radios, so I can’t be sure exactly where Nielson is…But I know what patrol rotation he’s on, and there’s only two on that rotation leaving the base today.”

“Let me guess, you want to play a bit of I Spy with your new toy here.” Alex says.

“Well, yeah! It’s not like you can fly it.” She quips.

Alex bites back a brag about piloting helicopters half-dead, thought turning instead to the target of her searches. “What are you going to do, Dana? Seriously?” He asks.

“I… I don’t know. I just want to look him in the face. I want to see what a real monster looks like.” She replies, voice soft.

Alex grits his teeth slightly – he would have thought she had seen too many atrocities in the past month, if he hadn’t already shown her enough monstrosity himself. He thinks briefly about trying to dissuade her – but can see by the set of her shoulders that she’s not going to be told to sit this one out.

He sighs, shaking his head. “Alright, but if you’re coming, grab a jacket. It looks like rain.”

\----

The first patrol proves to be a bust – one soldier had waved merrily at the drone as it scouted by them, Alex feared their cover had been blown, but the patrol hadn’t reacted further. Dana is hunched over the bulky tablet beside him, frowning in concentration as she maneuvers the drone through the city streets.

“God, since when did all these powerlines get everywhere?” She mutters angrily. “They’re a pain in the ass!”

“You have no idea.” Alex drawls. He’s draped an arm over the seat behind her in the pretense of being casual, but his keen, cold gaze is ceaselessly scanning the street. The rain is drumming lightly on the roof of the bus stop and most have emptied out of the sidewalks or are rushing by, too busy to pay the pair any attention. The downside is that it’s hard to hear the feed from the drone over the white noise of rainfall.

“Ok, I think this is them? They’re about to enter the Harlem exclusion zone, they’re the only patrol going in that far today.” Dana says. Alex turns his gaze from the street to the tablet.

On the screen they can see the figures of Blackwatch soldiers, moving in a loose formation ahead of a Stryker. They streets around them are empty as the drone follows them into the exclusion zone.

“I can’t get close enough to see any of their faces,” Dana sounds worried, frustrated. She pilots the quadcopter ahead of the bunch, turns it’s camera to peer down at the men as they approach. A stubborn line has appeared between her brows, proof enough to Alex of how important this is to her.

“Wait – let me listen.” Alex holds up a hand for silence, leaning closer to the weak tablet speakers and focusing all his attention on the live feed.

Dana settles the drone’s hover lower, as low as she dared. Over the whir of its propellers they can hear the patrol leader below them hollering orders as the group passes below.

“Ramsay, Boone, get up there and clear us a path!” He barks, waving a pair ahead of the remaining three.

Dana looks at Alex, but he shakes his head. It’s not enough, Alex can’t be sure.

Then the man, watching the two ahead of him, comments loudly to an offsider: “Gee, that fucking Ramsay runs like a girl! We should put him in a dress and leave him on the corner for a real man!”

The faintest snarl wrinkles one corner of Alex’s mouth. Now he’s certain. “That’s him. Nielson.”

Dana looks unconvinced, apprehensive even, “How can you be sure, we can’t even see his face?”

“Do you really want to know?” Alex fixes her with a stare – if she asks, he’ll be honest.

Dana suppresses a shudder, waves a hand dismissively. “No, no, I trust you.”

“Good. Are you coming?” Alex asks.

Dana knows what he's doing. He's giving her one last chance to back out, to leave this as it is, to stay _safe._ She looks for a second like she’s going to call it all off, forget about it – then her face hardens and she meets his stare with a steely gaze. The moment she'd started digging into Gentek was the moment she forwent any real safety. “Let’s finish this.”


	4. Waste Not

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Strap in, this chapter is a long haul! Didn't want to break the pace.

“I hate this thing.” Dana groans, voice muffled by the thick filters of the full face mask.

Alex glances back over his shoulder, mouth set in an unhappy line. “You’ll hate the alternative a whole lot more, I guarantee it.” He growls.

“Yeah, yeah,” She snarks back. He’s not happy and they both know it. Her stubbornness won out and he’s leading her right into the biggest exclusion area on the entire island.

The patrol is a few intersections ahead of them, and thus far, they’ve made it in unnoticed. For that, at least, Alex is grateful. He’s stuck at street level chaperoning Dana, the buildings press in on him like walls as they work slowly – so _agonizingly_ slowly, Alex thinks – through the streets of lower Harlem. The streets of are in disarray. This is not unusual in itself, but even Alex feels unsettled by the tension. The infected are on edge, unsettled by the patrol worming towards the hive. They’re clumped and agitated, making an already difficult pursuit even more complicated.

There’s a chorus of screams from ahead – Alex has grabbed Dana and pulled her down behind a wrecked car before she can so much as squeak. He peers through the wreck, watching the street ahead. A mob of infected have broken into a squabble over the remains of someone too slow to keep up with the main body of the patrol. It’s devolving into an all-out brawl and attracting far too much attention. It’s only a matter of time before something picks them up.

“We must be close.” Alex mutters. The wind shifts, now he’s feeling rain at his back not on his face. Beside him, Dana takes a moment to wipe the drops from the mask’s wide visor. She begins to feel her anxiety bite harder, sinking cold teeth into her stomach. She has no love for violence. Her nerves don’t go unnoticed; Alex is silently berating himself for letting her talk him into this.

One of the mob lifts it’s disfigured head and peers down the street through the drizzle. It stares towards the wrecked car.  
Alex bristles.  
It lets loose a wail and launches towards them.

“Time’s up!”

Alex grabs Dana’s shoulder, urging her to her feet. She streaks towards a nearby alleyway. Behind her, Alex puts a foot to the bumper of the car and kicks it into the oncoming pack to buy a precious few seconds of chaos. He surges after Dana, narrow alleyway engulfing them like a tunnel. Howls echo down the maze of concrete walls after them. Then, gunfire rings out through buildings ahead, carried on an undercurrent of feral screaming.

Alex bites back a growl – they’re moving too slow, the alley would funnel the infected right on them, they’re being driven right towards the patrol, this was a stupid idea, stupid! Suddenly, Dana tugs Alex’s sleeve. His gaze snaps to her and for a moment it’s hard and distant, but softens to something more familiar though equally unnerving.

“Up!” She points to a nearby fire escape. She’s trying her best to think despite the thunder of her racing heart and the ever encroaching fog of panic, and she can only think getting off the ground will give them that extra degree of distance from the infected.

With an effortless jump, Alex hooks and lowers the ladder. Dana scrambles up, reaching the first level as the mob rounds the corner behind them in a wave of rabid bodies. Their focus locks to Alex at the base of the fire escape.

“Keep climbing!” He shouts to Dana, sending the ladder back up with a flick of one hand.

“But-!” Dana begins to protest, cutting herself off as the first of the infected slams into Alex. He moves so fast she doesn’t see it, bringing an arm up and blocking it’s haphazard lunge with wicked claws. She freezes, shock and fear rooting her to the spot at the sight of the claws, claws that in an instant have cut delicate façade of Alex’s humanity to ribbons.

Alex stares her right in the eye through the respirator mask: “I said keep climbing!”

The edge has returned to his eyes – an inhumanly cold, predatory stare tempered with pure fury. She doesn’t argue and sets to climbing as fast as the rainslick metal stairs will allow her.

 

Below her, the rest of the mob flood towards Alex with single-minded intent to devour. The dam of tension that has been building at the back of his mess of a mind since the breakdown collapses. It flows straight to his limbs, released in the terrible violence with deadly intent. The fight is brutal, a feverish riot of howls accentuated with a symphony of grisly cracks. Dana locks her eyes forwards and upwards, trying to ignore it as much as possible.

Alex’s figure is lost in a tumult of gorey bodies as yet more infected enter from the other end of the alleyway, drawn in by the furor. They have a clear advantage in numbers, Alex can feel himself starting to tire under the relentless, mindless assault. He has to move, change up the fight. He rakes a wide, wild swipe and buys himself a second of space – then launches out of the mob, rebounding off a wall and latching onto the fire escape railing, panting and slightly unhinged.

Dana, four storeys up, stops as the whole structure shudders with the impact. Alex is barely two levels above her but the mob is looking up now, and it seems to realize that she’s stuck up there like a treed cat.

As one, they begin to climb furiously. They scale anything and everything, including eachother, piling up towards the fire escape like a raft of fire ants. One of the more able-bodied infected makes it onto the first level and scrambles up the outside of the narrow stairs like a deranged spider.

Fear ignites and drives Dana to her feet again, ignoring the burn in her legs and arms, racing up the next steep set of stairs. That only seems to urge the infected on and suddenly it’s snatching at her heels as she reaches the level and dashes for the next stairs. A blur swings past her – Alex vaults in from above and snares his quarry.

Alex’s face is fixed in a hungry, ragged snarl and his arms ripple, coils of ropey biomass snaking over his captive. It’s howls turn to panicked squealing.

"Oh my God - don't you fucking dare!" Dana screeches, muffled by the mask.

"What?!" Alex snaps, abating his consumption and throwing the squirming creature back into the crowd below, scattering the bulk of them like skittles.

"Don't you dare do _that_ , not in front of me!" She warns, eyes wide behind her mask.

"You've got to be kidding me." He says incredulously.

"They still look like _people!_ " Dana splays her shaking hands as if to stop him from coming any closer, overwhelmed by it all - this was a bad idea, she should have stayed away, she’d made a mistake and now she was going to die here, in this alley, on this shitty, rusted fire escape – then Alex slams her bodily into the wall, blocking the lunge of an infected. It had seized their momentary distraction and got within range. Alex catches it midair by the throat, claws lancing clear through it.

"Does this really look human to you?!” He spits at Dana over his shoulder, tossing the still writhing body back into the frenzy below with a terrifyingly casual flick of his arm.

 

Gunfire sprays the alley - Blackwatch arrives suddenly with the usual fanfare, following the rush of infected swarming the alley like ants.

Alex mantles Dana instantly, arm bulking into a shield, blocking her from bullets and Blackwatch's view, but they spot their bulk on the fire escape. Thankfully, the ground crew is preoccupied with fending off the swarming infected – but they aren’t alone. Alex hears the rumble of a diesel engine a second before the machine gun unleashes a hail of bullets upon him. He's got milliseconds - a cage of tendrils encases the landing, reinforcing his shield and protecting Dana from the assault.

They have to move - every bullet blasts away precious biomass and he can't divert his attention to grab anything from the alley below without weakening the shield. Alex can only think of one option. _She's not going to like this..._

He tightens his grip on Dana, ropy tendrils pulling her close to him - she barely notices, eyes screwed shut - then jumps. They rip from the now inert cage. He springs vertically upwards, head tucked over Dana, shoulders and neck bulked to take the brunt of damage as they blast through the metal fire escape.

Tracers follow them skywards but his jump is angled, and puts the roof of the buildings between them and the Stryker’s deadly fire. He feels the momentum of the jump slow as he reaches the zenith, and has but a heartbeat to assess where they're going to land - on a nearby roof - before he commits.

He rolls so he's falling head-first, still cradling Dana in a net of claws and tendrils - she's _screaming_ , he realises, clinging onto whatever she can of him - then they hit the roof.

Alex ploughs into the concrete in a geyser of rubble, hears Dana's scream cut off as the breath is knocked from her lungs. He freezes, thoughts of spinal injuries or concussion running wild – God, has he _killed_ her?

"Dana?"

"Never!" Dana gasps out after a moment of terrifying silence, " _Never again!_ "

Alex lets his head fall back for a second, light rain peppering his face, groaning. "You're welcome."

He withdraws the snaking cables of biomass and lifts his arm, letting her roll off him and stand, legs shaking. Alex follows - that stunt cost him, he's feeling _weak_. Dana gives him a worried look –she can see blackened veins snaking across him, stark against skin that’s shockingly paler then its normal pallor and littered with wounds – but the reprieve is shattered by the howl of an infected, bursting from the open door of the roof stairway towards them.

Alex’s attention snaps to it, gaze hungry.

"Close your eyes." He warns Dana, who is frozen like a deer in headlights beside him, still reeling from the jump.

The creature bounds towards them and Alex takes two steps forward - they meet with a slam, the creature grappling for a hold and biting madly at whatever it can reach, but Alex's arms have already engulfed it in an mess of tendrils. Realising too late, it screams in panic before it is pulled apart and consumed. Later, Dana will still hear the noise in the night-time quiet of her apartment, ringing in the back of her mind.

It's not much, but it will have to do. Alex turns and moves back alongside Dana, putting a hand on her shoulder and steering her towards the stairs. She flinches, stumbles, but moves with him.

"Sorry, sorry," She says as she follows him down into the apartments.  

"Forget it." Alex doesn’t let her discomfort bite, he’ll have more time to dwell on that later.

 

Their footsteps are loud in the narrow concrete stairwell. Alex peers over the banister, keeping an eye out for anything other than them on the stairs. The lower levels are a mess of garbage and debris, and more then one fetid corpse he can smell from floors away, so he ushers Dana out onto the fourth floor hallway.

She makes a beeline for the first door, rattling the handle. It doesn’t give, and she goes onto the next one. No luck. Alex slips past her and, with a firm push, pops the deadlock with a crack.

The apartment beyond is intact. Its almost surreal to be walking through the untouched remnants of someone else’s life. The façade is broken by the noise of gunfire and animalistic screams from outside.  Alex walks straight to the tiny balcony. The glass sliding door is stiff and squeals as he opens it. Dana follows, crouching and sneaking  a look at the street below. Alex hunkers down by her side.

The Blackwatch patrol has fanned out, guns blazing, trying to continue through their patrol having lost their larger target. At this distance, neither he nor Dana can make out Nielson.

 

“How do you want to do this?” Alex asks.

Dana chews her lip. “I… I want to look him in the eye.” She says at length.

“Alright then.” Alex peers back down at the soldiers. "A smash and grab won't work," He mutters, mostly to himself, though Dana, like any sibling would, assumes she's got a right to weigh in.

"Can't you just do that shield thing again? Charge right in?" Dana says with an award chop of her arm.

"No, because that takes biomass, and I'm a bit low on that right now because you got _squeamish!_ It's not like I can just grab a fucking a granola bar!" He snaps, frustration and fatigue beginning to wear. He’s more bluntly honest with her than he usually is, and the discomfort only rouses anger in her.

"Fine, God, I'm sorry I don't enjoy watching things _get ripped apart alive!_ " She hisses back.

Alex bites back a snarking reply. He can see she’s panicked and an inch from letting go entirely; if her anger can keep her going, then it’s fine by him. It’s how he gets by. An idea bubbles out of the overworked mess of his mind - it's risky, but no less mad than the entire situation.

He looks to Dana. "Wait here. Hide from anything that's not me. I'll be back."

"What? What are you going to do?"

He stands suddenly and as he does his figure melds seamlessly into that of a Blackwatch trooper like wax melting at hyper-speed. When he answers her, it's jarring, her brother's voice from a gas-masked figure too tall and broad and _wrong_.

 

"I'm going to catch your monster."

 

\----

 

Alex drops off the balcony and into the street below.

The patrol is still scattered, regrouping on the move, firing at the odd infected. Alex seizes the chance and falls in among them as they round a corner two blocks up, returning towards their original route now that their main target has been lost.

"Jesus, fucking sound your position!" A trooper spits at Alex’s disguised figure as he slips into formation.

"Radio's busted," Alex raps the side of his helmet, then turns his head to show damage that wasn't there a second ago.

"I don't care if you fucking sing it to me, just call it!"

 

Nielson never left the safety of the Stryker's shadow and the protection of the machine gun mounted on its back.

“Can’t believe you idiots let _Zeus_ slip the net!” The sergeant is running his mouth, as usual, uncaring for the sullen mood of his squad. The patrol is missing almost half its original numbers, but where others might limp home, Blackwatch presses on, fuelled by bitterness. The men around Nielson bite their tongues in silence – wary of the power held in his rank and his proclivity to reprimands dealt in beatings - but as far as he's concerned it's rapt attention.

"That'd be the icing on the cake, bagging _Zeus_ as well as smashing this fucking cesspool. Would make today worth my fucking time!" Nielson barely stops showboating long enough  to take a breath, uncaring of how his loud voice carries down the streets ahead of them. "Those fuckwits before couldn't even do the job with two squads and cavalry support, they probably couldn't find their own assholes with both hands and a map!"

Nielson gives a braying laugh at himself, there's a round of hollow chuckles from the squad because they know it’s worse if they don’t laugh. Alex grinds his teeth so hard it hurts and resolves to do this quickly, before the man's hollering garners any serious attention.

"Seriously now." The sergeant reins himself in a bit, "First man who spots _Zeus_ gets a round on me. Just so long as I get to land that fucking freak."

The patrol’s attention turns briefly forwards as a few infected come lurching out from the mess of the abandoned streets. Before any of them can fire, the gun turret of the Styker loses a short burst and mows them down in a spray of gore.

"Pedestrian effort. Come on, eyes up," Nielson raises his voice again, calling a challenge to his unseen quarry, "Where the fuck are you, you pussy?"

 

Relishing the timing, Alex steps up behind the sergeant. He’s close enough that the rest of the patrol hears it on their radios when an inhuman voice growls: "Right here, asshole."

 

Time slows. Nielson stops dead in his tracks, cold fear flooding him. He spins, rifle raising, finger already depressing the trigger, to see the trooper behind him seething, remodelling grotesquely into someone – some _thing_ \- else. It's too close, too fast, it surges forward and suddenly he's being crushed in it’s grip.

Panic shatters the squad. Shooting erupts without care of crossfire, but the inhuman figure explodes from their midst, ripping the patrol leader from the group in the blink of an eye. Shots trace it as it goes but nobody moves to give pursuit. The man’s angry screams fade into the general hellish sounds of an infected zone.

 

An unspoken, unanimous agreement settles on the patrol as the creature vanishes over a rooftop - nobody will be going after Sergeant Neilson.

 

\----

 

A scrap of cloth fluttering on a balcony draws his attention. As he gets closer, Alex realises it’s a curtain tied around the railing and smiles. Dana is nothing if not resourceful.

He launches off one building and onto roof of apartment block. Sergeant Nielson dangles in the clutches of vicious claws, still struggling feebly. Alex ignores him and drops effortlessly over the edge. The balconies rush past until he reaches out and stops their fall dead with a single hand, leaving them hanging off the balcony with Dana’s flag on it. He barely feels the jolt but Nielson gives a short scream.

“Still alive?” Alex growls, peering down at the man.

“Go fuck yourself!” He shouts back hoarsely.

Alex doesn’t hide his distaste and resists the urge to drop him, and not for the first time. He raises himself far enough over the railing to peer into the apartment. Dana’s figure materialises from the ruined kitchenette, drawn by the sergeant’s yell, holding the metal lamp from the corner of the lounge like a bat. The young woman visibly relaxes when she recognises him.

 

“Special delivery.” Alex says as he swings himself up onto the balcony proper. Any other time Dana would be unnerved at the ease with which he lifts his own weight plus that of another, going from latched to the side of a building to standing beside her like he was simply getting up from a chair. She tries not to look too much at the vicious, twisting limb that holds the man. Alex's monstrosity is plain to see - undeniably so - but he's got a point to make to the sorry figure hanging over the alleyway in the rain. He could attempt to make amends with Dana later. All her focus now is on the man.

“That’s him?” She asks quietly.

“I’m certain.” Alex replies.

Nielson is still attempting to wrestle from the grip off the creature holding him, uncaring, it seems, of the four storey drop below his feet. He’ almost pitiful, Dana thinks, he looks like a mouse struggling in a hawk’s talons.  
Any pity vanishes as he opens his mouth and barks with all the vehemence panic can afford him: “The fuck is this all about? Who’s this skinny bitch? You whipped, you mutant freak?”

Dana steels herself, stepping to the railing to address him. She sees Alex’s razor grip tighten warningly and is reassured by all the threats of brutality wordlessly embodied by his blatant inhumanity.

 

"Two weeks ago, in the Harlem yellow zone, you murdered a woman." Dana states, voice tremoring with rage and fear in equal parts.

"So what? I've shot a lot of bitches all over the fucking place!" Neilson spits at her.

Alex's lip curls, bearing unnaturally pointed teeth and cyanotic gums. He squeezes the man just a little harder, feeling ribs creaking under his grip, "There's no need to be rude, Sergeant Nielson.”

"Fuck... You!" He gurgles between what little gasps of breath he can take.

"What do you want done with him?" Alex lifts him higher over the edge of the balcony.

Dana pauses. She had mulled over this while she’d waited, crouched against the kitchen cupboard, and she hadn’t reached an answer.

For almost a week, this monster has haunted her dreams and waking hours, drawing her back again and again to that alleyway, trapping her in a line of faceless, masked troops, twisting her begging into due cause of lethal force. She had feared meeting him face to face, but now that she was close enough to see the bloodshot whites of his eyes, she saw he was nothing but a man. She’d hoped that she might see some reason for his brutality other than pure malice, but there was nothing. In some ways, he was more monstrous for being only human. All her fear, all her enraged determination, everything that had driven her into reach of the biggest hive on all of Manhattan, gutters and dies. Suddenly, she’s just tired and angry. Angry that one man could dog her mind with a single action, angry that he’d drawn her into this shithole, angry that she’d let herself be so hurt.

"I don’t care." Dana says softly, coldly.

Alex peers down at her, concerned by the edge in her voice. She fixes the struggling man with a cold look of disgust for a long moment, then meets Alex's gaze. He sees a fury there, a bitterness that he hasn't before. But he knows it well – he catches a glimpse every time he chances a mirror.

She breaks the look with a toss of her masked chin. "Do what you want - he's not worth wasting any more of my time.”

With that, she turns on her heel, vanishing back inside the apartment.

Alex puts aside his shock- he’d half expected her to tell him to let the man go – and turns a withering gaze back on the Sergeant, assessing him with a clinical coolness.

“What are you gonna do, pretty boy?” Nielson snarls, fear turning his helpless panic to anger.

Alex is deadly silent, still mulling over his options. He could just drop him, the fall alone probably wouldn’t kill him, but the hungry infected certainly would. Then he thinks of Dana, of the state he’d found her in, of all the trouble the man and his ilk had brought her. He could crush him, squeeze every last pitiful breath from his worthless body.  He tightens his grip again, feeling razor claws cutting through the Kevlar and ceramic plate armour, feeling the Sergeant’s heart thundering in his chest as he struggles to draw breath.

"Just… kill me already!" The man wheezes, hands scrabbling weakly at Alex's claws.

There’s a snatch of sound from within the apartment – a sob, muffled by the respirators of the gas mask. Dana, gripping the kitchen countertop for support, her strength gone, tries to pull herself together. The fatigue of the entire ordeal has come rushing in on her all of a sudden and she hasn’t the strength to fight it.

Sergeant Nielson sneers at the sound - despite his desperate gasps for air, despite the dangerously ruddy hue to his face, and despite the claws biting into him, hot blood running freely down his sides and in rivulets down Alex’s arm. Ravenous anger boils in Alex, bringing with it a low growl.

_Simply killing him_ , he decides, _would be too good an end for him_.

Dana retreats further and Alex turns his head to listen, waiting until he hears the apartment door shut behind him. Then he looks back at the Blackwatch sergeant with a savage, devilish grin.

"Waste not, want not, sergeant."

There is a millisecond of confusion in his captive before the panic of realisation, but writhing tendrils cover him before he can so much as draw breath to scream.

The consumption is slow. One might almost call it drawn out. He makes sure this monstrosity feels every second of it before he removes all trace of him from existence. Alex shudders as he gets but a taste of Nielson’s persona - foul, rotted through - then breaks it down so completely, buries it so far down, that he’ll never find it again..

 

\----

 

Dana makes it two steps down the hallway before her legs give out and she falls heavily against the wall. Crying makes it hard to breathe in the mask, but she doesn’t dare remove it, just hugs her knees so tight it hurts, buries her head in her arms, and just _weeps._ Her body heaves painfully with sobs.

A noise beside her makes her jump – but it’s just the apartment door closing behind Alex. His face is in shadow as he pads silently down the hall to her and hunkers down in front of her. She can’t bring herself to meet his gaze, ducks her head away with another bitter sob.

“Hey,” He says – that same, familiar voice – and ducks his head, trying to catch her eye.

Dana buries her head further in her arms, though her sobs have lessened.

Alex puts his hands on her shoulders – she flinches at the touch, but he doesn’t move them. “Dana. Look at me.”

Finally, she looks up at him. There’s not a trace of blood on him, not even a smear of gore to speak of whatever end the Sergeant met. His grey eyes are calm, almost warm, with no hint of the predator she knows he is.

“It’s over.” Alex says simply.

For once, he puts aside his own fears, follows the impulse, and draws her into an embrace.

Dana curls against him, clutching fistfuls of a jacket that feels like an impossible blend of denim and leather, listening desperately for a heartbeat other than her own. It’s there. Impossibly slow and steady, but it’s there. Alex holds her as tight as he dares.

They are silent for a minute. For a moment they exist outside of their harrowing contexts, only there for each other.

Dana’s crying finally eases with a shuddering sigh. She sits back and takes another stronger, calmer breath.

“I’m okay. My mask is all fogged up though.” She laughs weakly and Alex is heartened by the sound. He stands, offering her a hand. She takes it and lets him pull her to her feet.

 

“Let’s go home. I want a cup of coffee and a pepper-puff.” Dana declares. Though shaky with fatigue, her voice is strong.

“Pfeffernüsse.” Alex corrects instantly. His grin is audible.

Dana shoves him in mock annoyance and he sways like she actually managed to push him. “Whatever! Nerd.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks all for your patience! A little drabble took off and turned into this, it's been a blast. I'm even poking at writing another little oneshot with Alex and Dana, set a few years after [Prototype] and completely ignoring the second game, as is my prerogative. For now, I hope you'll enjoy this in it's completion!


	5. Epilogue: Reunion

The world burns, and is born anew.

Years pass. Dana rebuilds, like so many others. The steel of her resolve has been forged in thermonuclear flames. She's going to do what any good journalist would do and punish those responsible. She has the information - everything from Alex's secreted laptop, everything she'd sapped out of Gentec and Blackwatch through the plague. Initially she thinks too small - then realises the country can't police itself. She has to go bigger.

Dana Mercer's expose on Gentek/Blackwatch blows open the history of US biological warfare that had been hiding beneath the surface for decades. It's a comprehensive smackdown praised for pulling no punches, for vindicating the millions dead and displaced. It earns her a shelf full of awards and a spot on the top of the international who's who for investigative journalism. She refuses to get employed by one single organisation, turns down contracts that would have set her up for life. She's too wary of politics. She freelances and develops a reputation for clinically eviscerating her topics - she focuses on biological warfare, institutionalized military abuse, humanitarian aid crisis in warzones that are being swept aside for kill counts in mainstream media. Dana writes with the literary viciousness to match the physical brutality she'd seen, not least of all from the thing she would call brother.

Alex.

Dana sees remnants of Alex everywhere. In the damage to the streets, in the anger in her work. She tries to come to grips with Alex being, well, not human, and being gone. It helps her to write, to immerse herself in a topic up to her eyeballs, putting her memories on the backburner to sort themselves out. But there's always a little folder of resources, notes in a notebook she keeps on her person at all times while others get rotated on or off according to the story of the month. Alex is gone, she tells herself. Wiped from the world in a blinding flash, not even ashes. This is what she tells herself, what she tells the friends she makes in the years that follow. He fades slower from the mythos of the city as it rebuilds, but like all things, that too cools eventually.

 

\----

 

One day Dana gets a postcard. She's had plenty before, letters from admirers, from people angered by her work, but this one is different. She gets it not by mail, but by some old friends. The postcard went to the old safe house address - her friends never rebuilt, the entire apartment block got condemned, but the mail gets forwarded and they give it to Dana when they catch up over drinks one night. It's a postcard of pfeffernüsse, of all things, saying simply _'Love your work. Hoping this finds you well.'_ There's no return address, no signature, the handwriting is unfamiliar, but a postmark and mail stamps that tell her it was legitimately sent from Germany.

Dana's hand goes cold. _Nobody else knew. Nobody else could know. He's dead, gone, ash?_

She tucks it into the journal. She tries to forget.

Dana can't forget. She checks the postcard again and again, sometimes just to see that it's there. The date and airmail stamps all check out. A favor to a friend gets her as far as knowing it's a mass printed card sold to hundreds, if not thousands, of vendors. No way to trace it any closer than Germany as a whole. Her mind becomes plagued by 'what if's?'. Against her better judgement, she takes a risk. She writes a carefully constructed fluff piece, mentions a lunch with her brother at particular cafe on a particular date in a flashback. She publishes it quietly, barely a line in her latest post about a happy memory that never was. A waffle post on her blog, seen by only hundreds within the week. It slips below the traffic of her other posts and articles, unnoticed. She doesn't think it will work, but still she goes. She has to see the plan through for herself, to put him at rest once and for all.

 

\----

 

Dana sits with her back to the window and to the door. She can't bear staring, waiting, scanning every face and figure on the crowded streets. She brings work. She's always working, always writing, always researching. Her mind is a mess - she's been seeing ghosts all week leading up to the day, catching a glimpse of someone who looks similar enough in the reflection of the store window, or across the street, or through the crowd, but by the time she turns her head, they're gone. Someone walks by, the same balance of stalking and swagger, and she tells herself it's nothing, that she's jumping at shadows.

Now she waits. Tries to get stuck into reading these latest reports, transcripts of a hearing on chemical weapons from back before the first Gulf war, but she can't get into it. One leg bounces constantly and she tucks her legs under her seat ankles crossed, in an attempt to still herself, but one foot betrays her. She's grateful to the hubub of the lunch rush for melding conversations around her into white noise, but almost jumps out of her skin every time the door opens. She has to stop herself looking over her shoulder.

Barely fifteen minutes passes in agonising slowness. Dana keeps almost convincing herself to pack up and leave but a part of her would wait here all day if she had to, just to be sure. She goes over her coded message again, worried that she might have been too obscure, worried that she'd reacted to nothing, got herself worked up over someone's lost postcard. She opens her work emails - all three of them - and refreshes them. She checks the team chats, but the talk is absolutely inane. She goes back to her transcripts but ends up just staring at the screen so hard it all blurs.

 

Suddenly someone is beside her, placing two very full coffees onto the table with careful, practiced ease.

"Sorry, " Dana begins, automatically snatching her laptop away from the beverages, "You've got wrong table, I haven't ordered -"

The words die in her throat as she looks up at the figure who takes a seat across from her.

"That's alright, I know how you take it."

 

At first glance, he's nobody. Just another face. He's dressed like anyone else, long coat and layers against the early cold snap, looking a little disheveled by the day's wear. But the longer Dana looks, the more she sees, like a portrait coated in rotted varnish, but its so little and so scattered - the way a loose bit of hair is kinked from being constantly tucked behind one ear, hints of a faded scar, the faintest drawl to his words still ringing in her ears - she could be mistaken. Would he have aged at all? Or would he look like she remembers seeing him last, furious and desperate, run lean?

The man flicks the end of his long coat out as he sits, nodding towards the mug in front of her. "That is how you still take it, isn't it?" The voice is unaccented, unremarkable.

Dana looks down at the coffee - tall black, in a mug, exactly her drink - and swears her heart stops entirely. Tucked neatly beside the teaspoon are two pfeffernüsse. Her hands begin to tremor. She closes the laptop and puts it in the bag at her feet on autopilot.

The man across from her is quiet, watching her intently with a grey stare. The faintest crease forms between his brows, the only evidence in his otherwise easy demeanour of his apprehension. Dana draws the drink to her and finally looks back up. She takes a breath.

 

"Alex?" She asks. Her voice is barely a mumble above the buzz of the cafe around them, but he can hear it clear as day.

A lopsided grin spreads across his face. Instantly, it's as if a mask has come off and there's no way it could be anyone else. A million things burst inside her- relief in a maelstrom of other emotions, burning questions and bitter spouts of rage and blame - but all she can manage is a jibing "You're late."

Alex's grin widens to a laugh that shakes with relief. "I'm always late." The familiar drawl twists his voice, soft like it's out of practice. He looks across at his sister and feels a fierce warmth ignite in his chest - something he thought he'd long since stamped out or lost to the violence of years past. "Besides, I had to make a stop over in Oslo for those."

"You better have brought more than just these!" Dana hopes the false ire in her voice masks the tears she's biting back - if he hears them, he's at least got the sense not to react. He reaches into the pocket of his jacket and brings out the packet of cookies, sliding them across the table to her. He withdraws his hand as quick as he dares as she reaches for them, but is stopped by her hand on his. Dana's grip is strong, like she fears he'll cease to exist if she lets go.

She locks gazes and, with a squeeze of his hand, says "Thank you."

_Thank you for the biscuits, thank you for being real, thank you for finally coming back._ She doesn't say this, but her look and fierce grip makes it plain to him.

Alex's twisting grin softens into something more genuine than he's worn in months. He holds her hand a moment longer before they both release each other.  "Thank _you_...I thought you weren't going to reply, that you hadn't got my message."

"I almost didn't." She admits, taking a sip of her coffee at long last.

"What convinced you? Pfeffernüsse?" He asks.

"Oh, absolutely, I was only in this for the paffernoose." She botches the pronunciation just enough.

"Pfeffernüsse." He corrects on impulse - then stops as he sees the fiendish grin on her face. "Oh, real clever."

"You didn't think in five years I wouldn't learn how to say that properly?" She chides him.

They both lock gazes with each other, twin looks of wicked wit. Then, they laugh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all the readers and everyone who commented! Here's a little oneshot, completely theoretical 'what if' epilogue that has no want nor care for canon sequels.


End file.
